The Shotgun Blog
« The time for excuses is long over | Main | A Feudal State »
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
The Fuhrer Calls
But German police are not amused:
The 54-year-old had the speech - in which the Nazi leader pledged the "destruction of world Jewry" if Germany was "dragged" into war - programmed into his Nokia phone.
Passengers aboard a train in Hamburg heard the ring tone several times during a journey and reported him to police who seized him at the end of his journey.The 54-year-old had the speech - in which the Nazi leader pledged the "destruction of world Jewry" if Germany was "dragged" into war - programmed into his Nokia phone.
How exactly does turning twelve years of national history, albeit very dark years, into an off limit subject preserve German freedom? There might have been some rationale, at least in the immediate post-war years, in banning Nazi symbols and paraphernalia. The remaining Nazi sympathizers were clearly a threat to the young Bundesrepublik. Banning a party which advocated violence was also a perfectly legitimate act. Some seven decades later it looks more like a paranoid limitation on freedom of speech. The ban also grants an undeserved mystique to one of history's greatest mass murderers.
Posted by Richard Anderson on July 7, 2010 | Permalink
Comments
You can thank the allies for that. The "denazification" (which wasn't really one) to the banning of symbols etc.
The public wearing of these symbols is still a criminal offence that came in with the reconstitution of the then FRG and has remained on the books since then.
Posted by: Snowrunner | 2010-07-07 10:33:38 AM
Banning something has the same effect as excessive taxation. It simply moves the subject underground where government loses control.
Much like our government apologizing for every perceived slight to natives and immigrants in the last 300 years, most people just give it the mental middle finger.
Posted by: peterj | 2010-07-09 11:15:50 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.